Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [97]
Of course, Madred hadn’t had a chance to finish before the game was raided.
“Remember what you said to me?” Picard went on when Madred said nothing else. ” ‘Enemies deserve their fate.’ You said Jil Orra had been raised with that. Oh, yes, even through the haze I remember your daughter. How old was she then?—about seven in Earth years? Eight? I was rather dismayed that you let her into the torture room, let her see me lying there on your floor, almost destroyed by your subcutaneous instrument, exhausted and wrecked at your order, at your whim … you excused yourself by telling me that Jil Orra understood that Cardassia had enemies and enemies deserved what they got. Now she would be about thirteen, isn’t she? Fourteen?”
“By your reckoning, yes.”
“I’m sure she understands now that things are not so simple. As she grows older, she’ll distill the ugly truth that her father freely executed torment when no crime had been committed.”
“She might.” Madred accepted Picard’s point.
“You weren’t even a particularly imaginative torturer.” Picard lowered his voice, narrowed his eyes, and looked penetratingly at Madred. “Did you think the tide would never turn?”
Madred felt strangely unmoved, though Picard was trying very hard to move him.
“Are you looking for my repentance, Captain?” he asked directly.
“Not at all,” the Starfleet man said. “If the Cardassian ruling council expects Federation help to fend off aggression by the Klingons, and you had better, then now is the time to make a strong gesture of good faith. And you had better. Otherwise there will be legal action, no treaty, and you’ll have not only Klingons but also Starfleet at your throat.”
“Legal action?” A nervous laugh bolted through Madred’s chest. “Are you threatening me with your Federation courts? Picard, really. What a joke.”
The captain took a step back from the edge of the desk and seemed more insulted by that comment than he had by all the torture.
“We are a body of laws and rights,” he said. “If Cardassia wants to deal with us, and you’re going to very soon, you’ll have to abide with our laws and rights and our judicial process, and treaties, and all kinds of things criminal governments don’t fancy.”
The room seemed chilly. Probably just the company. And large—Madred was used to the sprawling size of the “office”—in fact, he had designed it, but today it seemed rather too big. The size gave his customers a sense of smallness, insignificance. The slate floor offered no comfort to bloodless feet. The lighting here was harsh and directed, and cast shadows. It lay crassly upon Jean-Luc Picard’s carved features as he closed up the small space between himself and Madred’s desk.
“Captain Fernando,” he demanded, “First Officer Court, Second Officer Garland, Chief Engineer Rollins, Third Officer Ballenger, Fourth Officer McClellan, Engineer’s Mate Leith, and seventeen crewmen … Captain Atherton, his first and third mates, his wife, and nine deckhands. Their location or locations. Right now.”
The litany of names actually caused a slight echo in the big room. Or perhaps it was only the way Picard spoke. Until now Madred had not known the extent of detail Starfleet knew about who was being held and who wasn’t. The numbers were off by a few, but very few.
Another problem—some of those persons were no longer animate. Of course, Madred hadn’t admitted anything yet. There was still time to admit nothing.
Admission might not be necessary. Picard knew perfectly well that there were captives held by the Cardassians. In fact he knew it firsthand. Denial would be silly.
The captain stood with a barrister’s posture before Madred, one shoulder slightly toward the desk, one slightly away, and there seemed to be something important about not blinking.
The effect was not without its success.
“I understand you,” Madred offered. “Times do change. I would be lying